Understanding racism in physical (biological) anthropology

The mainstream of American physical anthropology began as racist and eugenical science that defended slavery, restricted “non-Nordic” immigration, and justified Jim Crow segregation. After World War II, the field became more anti-racial than anti-racist. It has continued as a study of natural influences on human variation and thus continues to evade the social histories of inequitable biological variation. Also reflecting its occupancy of white space, biological anthropology continues to deny its own racist history and marginalizes the contributions of Blacks. Critical disciplinary history and a shift toward biocultural studies might begin an anti-racist human biology.     

Camelot at Yale: The Construction and Dismantling of the Sapirian Synthesis, 1931-39

For a brief shining moment in the 1930s, Edward Sapir stood at the forefront of a new synthesis of Boasian ethnology and linguistics. But his call to Yale in 1931 was a mandate taken up against formidable odds, and the grand synthesis soon began to unravel. George Peter Murdock, who became chairman in 1939, moved the department toward science and "verified theory." In the period immediately following World War II, Sapir's program was not revived, but its legacies have come to us by way of the Yale ethnoscience and linguistic anthropology of the 1960s, and his synthesis remains a viable option for Americanist anthropology at the millennium.     

Reclaiming Applied Anthropology: Its Past, Present, and Future

Growing concerns about anthropology's impact in both academia and the broader social arena have led to calls for more "public" and more relevant anthropology. In this article, we expand on these exhortations, by calling for systematic joining of critical social theory with application and pragmatic engagement with contemporary problems. We argue for the repositioning of applied anthropology as a vital component of the broader discipline and suggest that it should serve as a framework for constructing a more engaged anthropology. In revisiting disciplinary history and critiques of applied anthropology, we demonstrate the central role that application has played throughout anthropology's evolution, address common misconceptions that serve as barriers to disciplinary integration, examine the role of advocacy in relation to greater engagement as well as the relationship of theory to practice, and conclude with an assessment of the diverse work that is subsumed under the inclusive rubric of "anthropology in use."     

Conceptualizing world art studies: An introduction

This special issue aims to contribute to the conceptualization of World Art Studies. The first two articles offer evaluative views from art history, the third and fourth perspectives from anthropology, the fifth and sixth arguments for including neo-evolutionary and neurological studies in understanding world art as a universal human behavior.     

Joyeuses Tropiques: Five Encounters with Alterities in Brazil

The paper describes the predicament of Brazilian anthropology through a personal experience of teaching and living in Brasilia. Just like Brasilia, Brazil is many ways considered as “a work in progress” – and Brazilian anthropology as a lively and thriving area, although frequently overlooked by non-Brazilian scholars. The situation in which Brazilian anthropologists find themselves is put in the context of their own history, as well as the particular social conditions of the country – with special reference to Brazil as invention, taking as an example celebration of “500 years of Brazil.”     

Old Efforts at New Uses: A Brief History of Chemurgy and the American Search for Biobased Materials

The American search for biobased and renewable raw materials has a long history of intermittent success and frustration. This article traces the history of the chemurgy movement-a precursor to what are now sometimes called agricultural "new uses" initiatives-from its context of the 1920s through its emergence as a political force in the mid-1930s, when chemurgy offered a strategy for industries and governments interested in reviving the agricultural economy and reducing dependence upon foreign sources of industrial raw materials. Chemurgists put pressure upon the U.S. Department of Agriculture to devote greater attention to crop utilization research, efforts that were operational in time to make important contributions to the U.S. economy during World War II. This article devotes considerable attention to the postwar era, a period not discussed in most histories of chemurgy. The article concludes with a tentative assessment of issues that caused chemurgy to falter in the past as well as precautionary lessons for the contemporary study of biobased materials.     

The rise of academic physical anthropology in the United States (1880–1980): A historical overview

This paper surveys the development of physical anthropology in the period from 1880 to 1980, beginning with the founding of the U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology and the advent of professionalism in anthropology. The growth of physical anthropology within academic anthropology and the effect of the bias toward ethnology and archaeology is considered. Three historical phases are suggested: pre-1900, the pre-academic period of physical anthropology; 1900–1930, the initial development of academic physical anthropology, which witnessed the founding of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology and the American Association of Physical Anthropologists by Hrdli?ka, and of Hooton's program at Harvard University; 1930-present, which has seen the full development of physical anthropology in an academic context.     

'Reform' eugenics and the decline of Mendelism.

By the mid-1930s, according to Daniel Kevles, 'mainline eugenics had generally been recognized as a farrago of flawed science.' By then, most geneticists accepted that eugenic sterilization could not rid society of its undesirables. But paradoxically, eugenics still had supporters even among its scientist critics, whom Kevles called 'reform eugenicists'. My opinion is that there was no such sharp turning point in eugenics. Reliance on simple mendelian inheritance faded away, but eugenics continued much as before until after World War II. In this paper, I consider the history of the eugenics movement in terms of its concepts of the inheritance of 'feeble-mindedness' and psychosis as single-gene recessives, and sterilization as a means of control.     

Boas, Foucault, and the "Native Anthropologist": Notes toward a Neo-Boasian Anthropology

This article proposes the possibility of a neo-Boasian anthropology conceived at the intersection of Foucauldian genealogy, Boasian historicism, and the epistemic rethinking of the discipline's Self/Other binary. Shifting from a perspective of posing the ethnographic object as Other toward a Boasian conception of the past as the principal site of inquiry, the piece thus advocates an anthropological project grounded in the history of the present. This conception, it is argued, can overcome several of the dilemmas currently facing the discipline, the awkward status of "native anthropology" foremost among them.     

Energy restriction during childhood and early adulthood and ovarian cancer risk

Dietary energy restriction may protect against cancer. In parts of The Netherlands, mostly in larger cities, periods of chronically impaired nutrition and even severe famine (Hunger Winter 1944-1945) existed during the 1930s and World War II (1940-1945). We studied the association between energy restriction during childhood and early adulthood on the risk of ovarian cancer later in life. In 1986, the Netherlands Cohort Study was initiated. A self-administered questionnaire on dietary habits and other cancer risk factors was completed by 62,573 women aged 55-69 years at baseline. Follow-up for cancer was established by record linkage to the Netherlands Cancer Registry. After 16.3 years of follow-up, 364 invasive epithelial ovarian cancer cases and 2220 subcohort members (sampled from the total cohort directly after baseline) with complete information confounders were available for case-cohort analyses. In multivariable analysis, ovarian cancer risk was lower for participants with an unemployed father during the 1930s (Hazard Ratio (HR), 0.70; 95% Confidence Interval (CI), 0.47-1.06) compared to participants with an employed father as well as for participants living in a city during World War II (HR, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.54-0.90) compared to participants living in the country-side. Residence in a Western City during the famine (Hunger Winter) was not associated with a decreased risk. Our results show a relation between proxy variables for modest energy restriction over a longer period of time during childhood or early adulthood and a reduced ovarian cancer risk.     

Thinking about artworlds in a global flow: Some major disparities in dealing with visual culture

This article will argue that the differences between art history and the anthropology of art not just due to discipline-driven methodologies, though these are certainly a factor, but also occur because art historians and anthropologists are usually asking rather different questions, and finding the answers in quite different places within the culture. As a starting point I will demonstrate these differences of both approach and result, using two acclaimed studies by anthropologists of African expressive culture, one from the Congo (Zaïre), the other from Sierra Leone. Although very different from each other, both downplay the importance of affect, and both assume aesthetic practice is transparent, i.e. that it directly reflects the meaning of life or human behavior. No art historian would make such a confident assumption.     

Olive Pink and the Encounter with the Academy

Olive Pink studied anthropology at the University of Sydney under Professor A.P. Elkin. Although she did fieldwork among the Northern Aranda and Wailbri of Central Australia, she became disenchanted with anthropology and lived a reclusive life in Alice Springs. In this paper I present a brief outline of her life, particularly during the 1930's I point to the problems she encountered and suggested that she needs to be relocated within her discipline.     

An examination of factors influencing black fertility decline in the Mississippi Delta, 1880–1930

Abstract

Although the fertility decline in the black population in the Mississippi Delta between the late 1870's and early 1930's closely paralleled that of the national black population, it rose much more dramatically in the 1940's and 1950's to almost 1880 levels. Given the especially rural and oppressed conditions of blacks there, the initial decline seems puzzling. Low fertility rates in the 1930's reflected a large proportion of childless females. Investigations of changing contraceptive usage and mate exposure suggest both were minor components at most. Several physiological impairments were investigated including dietary deficiences, malaria, tuberculosis, and sexually transmitted diseases (STD). Evidence suggests STD played the major role, facilitated by nutritional and other health problems. Models relying heavily on those developed by McFalls and McFalls (1984) suggest 50–80 percent of the decline could have been due to the spread of STD. Age‐specific birth rates for different periods and post‐World‐War‐II fertility increases seem consistent with this finding.     

How did East German genetics avoid Lysenkoism?

Lysenkoism gained favour in the Soviet Union during the 1930s and 1940s, replacing mendelian genetics. Opponents of Lysenko were dismissed from their jobs, imprisoned and, not infrequently, died. After World War II in some of the East European Soviet satellite states, Lysenkoism became the official genetics supported by the communist authorities, and thus, genetics and biology were set back many years. Yet the uptake of Lysenkoism was not uniform in the Eastern Bloc. The former East Germany (GDR) mostly escaped its influence, owing to the contribution of a few brave individuals and the fact that the country had an open border with the West (West Berlin).     

The American Anthropological Association and the Values of Science, 1935-70

American anthropologists have repeatedly addressed questions about the nature of anthropology as a science and the relationship of anthropology to society. Complex interactions between anthropology and political events in American life have challenged definitions of science, including anthropologists as citizens, scientists, and professionals and the roles they appropriately play. A series of exchanges and events between the 1930s and 1970 are examined in order to shed light on some of the recurrent dilemmas of definition and practice in anthropology as anthropologists have grappled with them in different times and in relation to different contexts. [Keywords: U.S. anthropology, U.S. history, science]     

‘Being Honest to my Science’: Reo Fortune and J.H.P. Murray, 1927-301

Reo Fortune worked on Tewara Island in the D'Entrecasteaux group in the Australian Territory of Papua from November 1927 to May 1928. His relations with the Lieutenant-Governor J.H.P. Murray and the government anthropologist F.E. Williams were problematic. In this paper I argue that Fortune's actions, along with increasing tension between Murray and Radcliffe-Brown, were sufficient for a change in Murray's attitude towards continued independent anthropological research in Papua. After 1930, despite his early support for colonial officers receiving training in anthropology, Murray sent no cadets or officers for training in the university. With the exceptions of Geza Roheim and Paul Wirz, both in 1930, Williams conducted all anthropological research in Papua until the outbreak of the Pacific War in December 1941.     

Anthropologies of art

This paper discusses how different conceptions of the idea of ‘anthropology’ entail different views of the ‘anthropology of art’. The prevailing notion of anthropology as the Western study of small-scale non-Western societies leads to a conception of the anthropology of art as dealing with the visual arts of these societies or cultures. Anthropology is sometimes also interpreted as referring to a particular approach that is applicable in examining sociocultural phenomena in whatever culture, including its art forms. Both conceptions of anthropology may be considered subsidiary to a more encompassing view of anthropology as the multidisciplinary study of humankind. Following this view, the anthropology of art becomes the comprehensive examination of art in human existence. As such it would coincide with World Art Studies, conceived as the global and multidisciplinary study of the visual arts.     

Not just in the past: Racist and sexist biases still permeate biology,anthropology, medicine,and education

In the past decades, it has been increasingly recognized that some areas of science, such as anthropology, have been plagued by racist, Western-centric, and/or sexist biases. Unfortunately, an acculturation process to racism and sexism has been occurring for generations leading to systemic inequities that will take a long time to disappear. Here, we highlight the existence of current examples of racism, Western-centrism and sexism within: (1) the most popular anatomical atlases used in biological, anthropological and medical education; (2) prominent natural history museums and World Heritage Sites; (3) biological and anthropological scientific research publications; and (4) popular culture and influential children's books and educational materials concerning human biology and evolution.     

Unofficial Histories: A Vision of Anthropology from the Margins

Initially given as the Presidential Address at the 100th Meeting of the AAA, this article examines the contributions women and minority anthropologists who have struggled to gain a place at the center of the discipline. Despite 25 years of scholarship on women and minorities, anthropology needs to go further in terms of paying attention to their pioneering efforts and the breadth of their scholarship. The article explores four currently important areas of creativity: (1) the transformation of field research through problem-oriented participant observation and "native anthropology," as exemplified by George Hunt, the young Margaret Mead, Delmos Jones; (2) the evolution of more dialogical forms of ethnographic writing, as pursued by Elsie Clews Parsons, Gladys Reichard, Ella Deloria, and Zora Neale Hurston; (3) sources of critique, as embodied in the work of Ruth Benedict and Michelle Rosaldo; (4) forms of activism, engaged in by Anita McGee, Benedict, Mead, and Alfonzo Ortiz.